Citation and License

BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:92
doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-92

Published: 10 April 2011

Abstract

Background

Mustelidae, as the largest and most-diverse family of order Carnivora, comprises eight
subfamilies. Phylogenetic relationships among these Mustelidae subfamilies remain
argumentative subjects in recent years. One of the main reasons is that the mustelids
represent a typical example of rapid evolutionary radiation and recent speciation
event. Prior investigation has been concentrated on the application of different mitochondrial
(mt) sequence and nuclear protein-coding data, herein we employ 17 nuclear non-coding
loci (>15 kb), in conjunction with mt complete genome data (>16 kb), to clarify these
enigmatic problems.

Results

The combined nuclear intron and mt genome analyses both robustly support that Taxidiinae
diverged first, followed by Melinae. Lutrinae and Mustelinae are grouped together
in all analyses with strong supports. The position of Helictidinae, however, is enigmatic
because the mt genome analysis places it to the clade uniting Lutrinae and Mustelinae,
whereas the nuclear intron analysis favores a novel view supporting a closer relationship
of Helictidinae to Martinae. This finding emphasizes a need to add more data and include
more taxa to resolve this problem. In addition, the molecular dating provides insights
into the time scale of the origin and diversification of the Mustelidae subfamilies.
Finally, the phylogenetic performances and limits of nuclear introns and mt genes
are discussed in the context of Mustelidae phylogeny.

Conclusion

Our study not only brings new perspectives on the previously obscured phylogenetic
relationships among Mustelidae subfamilies, but also provides another example demonstrating
the effectiveness of nuclear non-coding loci for reconstructing evolutionary histories
in a group that has undergone rapid bursts of speciation.